Our Dogs Need You to Get Fit!

Transcription

1 Saving just one dog won t change the world... but, surely, the world will change for that one dog... Our Dogs Need You to Get Fit! Interested in walking or running a fun 5K and doing some fundraising at the same time? Our dogs need your help! You can sign up as a walker or runner for the Furry Friends 5K and collect pledges for Speaking of Dogs Rescue. The run is on Sunday June 4th in Whitby. Please visit for all of the information about the race and how to sign up and collect pledges. You can also Gerry at gbarton@rogers.com or Kim kim@speakingofdogs.com for more info. APRIL 2017 the official speaking of dogs monthly newsletter In this month s newsletter Dogs looking for homes...2 Ask the trainer...4 Events...5 Bits & bites...6 Recent adoptions...7 Updates...8 Party4Paws photos...9 In memoriam...10 About Speaking of Dogs Speaking of Dogs is a Toronto-based organization that launched in 2001 and is dedicated to educating and enlightening people about dogs through seminars, workshop forums, outreach and rescue. Our goal is to end cruelty, abandonment, mistreatment and homelessness of man s best friend. Speaking of Dogs Rescue is the operating name of Speaking of Dogs Rescue Program, a Canada Revenue Agency registered charity based in Ontario. Contact Speaking of Dogs P.O. Box 8058, RPO Hurontario Collingwood, ON L9Y 0H1 Phone: SODR (7637) info@speakingofdogs.com Web: Newsletter Team Editor: Nancy Foran Design: Cathy Vandergeest at Contributors: Nancy Foran, Lorraine Houston Mirkka Koivusalo, and Kim Gladding Newsletters If you no longer want to receive our newsletter, newsletter@speakingofdogs.com, with unsubscribe written in the subject line. Speaking of Dogs Newsletter April

2 Dogs Looking for Homes A friend in need is a friend indeed Without a doubt, a dog is a real friend. Our dogs come in all shapes and sizes, but they have one thing in common they all need loving forever homes. Open your heart and your home to a rescue dog. You ll be glad you did. For complete information about the adoption process, please visit For more information on each dog, simply click on their name. Roxy GERMAN SHEPHERD LARGE, SENIOR, FEMALE FEATURED DOG: Roxy is now ready for her next chapter her forever home! She is an amazing 10-year-young German Shepherd Dog whose owner passed away in January. She is a brilliant dog, social, housetrained, great house manners, good in the car, and she just loves people. Roxy lived with two cats in her previous life, so she s good to go on the cat front! She really enjoys playing with her soft rubber squeak ball and will spend hours retrieving it. Walking on the nature trails is another fave! Her leash manners are lovely, even as she sniffs and explores she is always aware of her people and rarely pulls. Roxy is best suited to a dog-less home since she can sometimes be a bit bossy, but she is social and appropriate when meeting dogs on her walks, and she does not lunge or bark, even when passing a dog who is lunging at her. Good girl Roxy! She is hoping to find an adopter who works from home, can take her to work or is retired. She can spend time alone, but she loves being with her people and needs to go out for her business midday. Can you give Roxy her second chance? Oscar BEAGLE MEDIUM, ADULT, MALE Bobbie MALTESE / POODLE MIX SMALL, SENIOR, FEMALE Hank CATTLE DOG / BULLDOG MIX LARGE, ADULT, MALE Speaking of Dogs Newsletter April

3 Copper BEAGLE MEDIUM, SENIOR, MALE Jack AUSTRALIAN CATTLE DOG MIX MEDIUM, ADULT, MALE Chance BULLMASTIFF MIX LARGE, YOUNG, FEMALE Max BEAGLE / BASSET HOUND MEDIUM, SENIOR, MALE Benji CHIHUAHUA SMALL, ADULT, MALE Merry FOREVER IN FOSTER POMERANIAN / SPANIEL MIX SMALL, SENIOR, FEMALE Carl LABRADOR RETRIEVER MIX LARGE, SENIOR, MALE Jasper & Vito BEAGLES MEDIUM, SENIOR, MALE Speaking of Dogs Newsletter April

4 Ask the Trainer GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT You come home from work, open the front door, and see that the garbage has been knocked over and someone has had an allyou-can-eat buffet, or you find the remote control on the couch chewed to hundreds of pieces along with the pair of shoes you just bought. Then your dog comes to greet you, slinking back, cowering, and avoiding eye contact, with his ears pinned back and his tail tucked under. The only plausible explanation for his behaviour seems to be that he is feeling guilty for doing things he is not supposed to do and you can t help but feel he should! We humans base this behavioural assumption on our own behaviour: we behave in a particular way when we feel guilty, therefore because the dog behaves in a similar way in equivalent circumstances, we assume that the behaviour we see in the dog is also accompanied by feelings of guilt. This is anthropomorphism: an attribution of human characteristics or behaviours to an animal. Guilt is one of what are called secondary emotions, that is an emotional reaction that we have in response to other emotions. Is it possible that dogs, even though they aren t cognitively at the same level as us humans, cannot only look guilty but also feel guilt? Can they reflect on their past actions and decide that they have done something wrong? It is very difficult to know exactly what a dog is feeling with any certainty. However, behavioural scientist Dr. Alexandra Horowitz (2009) did study the lead up to the guilty look. For her study, dog owners would leave a treat on the ground, tell the dog to leave it, and then leave the room. A researcher stayed in the room with the dog and either let the dog eat the treat or took it away from them. Then the researcher told the owner to return and randomly varied the owner s knowledge of what the dog did in their absence. If the owners were told that the dog had disobeyed, they would scold the dog, and if they were told that the dog had obeyed, they greeted the dog happily. The results revealed that the guilty look was purely associated with the owner s scolding: the dogs would show the guilty look in response to being scolded whether they had eaten the treat or not. In fact, more guilty look behaviours were seen in trials when owners scolded their dogs when they had been obedient. So why would the dog look guilty if they had done nothing wrong? This is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the guilty look is more intense or occurs only when the dog disobeys. Rather, a better description of the guilty look is that it is a response to the owner s cues; the dog may look fearful in anticipation of punishment by the owner. However, a lot of dog owners say that they can be unaware of a dog s misdeed and it is the dog s guilty behaviours that alert them to the fact that their dog has done something wrong in their absence, before they actually find out about it. Hecht et al. (2012) studied: 1. whether dogs show more guilty behaviours when greeting their owners when they had disobeyed rather than obeyed in the owners absence, and 2. whether owners can tell if their dog had transgressed based solely on the dog s greeting behaviour. The authors of the study found that there were no significant differences between obedient and disobedient dogs in their display of guilty behaviours after having the opportunity to break a rule in their owner s absence. Dogs who had eaten food from a table were not more likely to look guilty than dogs who hadn t eaten the food. Also, when it came to an owner s ability to recognize their dog s transgressions based solely on the dog s behaviour when returning to the room, the study found that owners could not reliably identify the guilty look without scolding the dog. All in all, direct evidence supporting the claim that dogs can look guilty and know that they did something wrong is lacking. What seems a more plausible explanation is their ability to pick up on subtle social and environmental cues. But what does this mean for the average dog owner? Next time you come home to a mess, don t blame or scold your dog, regardless of how guilty you think they look. Keep garbage, food and any other forbidden items where your dog can t access them, and make sure your dog gets their daily exercise and has lots of fun and safe activities to keep them occupied while you re out. Additional Reading Hecht, Julie, Ádám Miklósi, and Márta Gácsi, Behavioral Assessment and Owner Perceptions of Behaviors Associated with Guilt in Dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 139, no. 1-2 (June 2012): Horowitz, Alexandra, Disambiguating the Guilty Look : Salient Prompts to a Familiar Dog Behaviour. Behavioural Processes 81, no. 3 (July 2009): Mirkka Koivusalo, MSc, PhD, owner of Mindful Behaviors and co-owner of the Toronto Centre For Canine Education Speaking of Dogs Newsletter April

5 Events SPRING PET EXPO Join us at our booth at the Spring Pet Expo, Canada s largest consumer pet show. Speaking of Dogs rescue will be there to promote our dogs and provide information about responsible pet adoption and ownership. The expo will feature more than 300 exhibitors across three halls. Stop by our booth and then catch the Top Dog Trick event, Best Dressed Pet contest, hands-on exotics petting zoo, meet-and-greets with celebrity animals as well as Canada s largest cat show! Pets are, of course, welcome. Time: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday Date: Friday 14 April to Sunday 16 April Location: International Centre, 6900 Airport Road, Mississauga Re: Anya WOOFSTOCK IS COMING! The weather s getting warmer, so Woofstock must be just around the corner! The event will be taking place on May 27th and 28th, in Woodbine Park. Stay tuned to next month s newsletter for all of the details, or visit Congratulations to longtime volunteer Karen Flude and her husband Grant on the arrival of their new son, Jensen Dane Flude. GET YOUR 2017 DIRECTORY! PROVINCE OF ONTARIO Breed Specific and All Breed Rescue Contacts 2017 * Sage Loved by: Natalie Robertson and Jerry Higgins Adopted from: Gentle Jake s Coonhound Rescue Photo by: Tracy Munson * Includes Provincial Shelters The 2017 Breed Specific and All Breed Rescue Contacts directories are now available! If you would like a copy, please lorraine@speakingofdogs.com. To: Speaking of Dogs Rescue From: Francesca and Chris Subject: Anya update We recently celebrated two years since Anya adopted us, and her 12th birthday. As rookie dog owners, we couldn t have asked for a better dog to train us! Anya s early coaching methods included following us around the house, gazing up adoringly with her tongue sticking out, jumping into our laps whenever we sat down, and prodigious hand-licking and doggie facials. Anya defies her age by springing onto the couch and the bed and racing up and down the stairs. After some initial reluctance to explore her new neighbourhood, she now struts around with her tail held high, happily greeting everyone she meets. Anya s made several close friends at the local park, both canine and human. She s recently started a new trick hurdling over her canine BFF. Our sweet little Anya has changed our lives in ways we couldn t have imagined. Many thanks and gratitude to foster parents Andrea and Jeremy, and Lorraine and her Speaking of Dogs rescue team, for bringing us together. Speaking of Dogs Newsletter April

6 Bits & Bites Simply click on a summary to be whisked away to the internet page where you can read the full story. Animal rescue groups in BC are looking to develop standards for the province s many rescue groups. W5 and the Toronto Star reported about a Montreal lab being investigated for allegedly abusing dogs, pigs, and monkeys. There are many reasons to use only positive, reward-based training methods. This blog from Companion Animal Psychology discusses seven! The OSPCA is investigating after a video of dog walker appearing to abuse a dog was posted to Instagram. Meet Zoose, the dog who saved three people from a collapsed snow fort in Nova Scotia and who is a very good boy! This Global News report shows there s never a safe time of year to leave your dog unattended in a car. Dr. Karen Becker offers 5 Ways You Can Help Put Puppy Mills Out of Business. Looking for a new harness? Whole Dog Journal has rated and reviewed what it considers the best dog harnesses of The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center received 180,639 cases last year, and they ve compiled a list of the top 10 pet toxins of Speaking of Dogs Newsletter April

7 Happy Tails MARCH ADOPTIONS: A big thank you to our foster parents and our new adoptive guardians for helping give these loving dogs a second chance. Chance Cooper Haley Skylar Huck Mack Roo Willie Nelson Chester Casey Speaking of Dogs Newsletter April

8 Updates DONATE A CAR, CHANGE A LIFE! Do you have an old vehicle you need to get rid of? Perhaps an old, rusted car, van, truck, motorcycle, RV, or boat parked in your garage that seems like it s good for nothing? Consider the amazing difference you d be making in a dog s life by donating your car to Speaking of Dogs Rescue. We are excited to announce a new partnership with Cars 4 Cures, a Canadian car donation company that helps Canadian charities make the lives of those in need a little bit easier. Cars 4 Cures will turn what appears to be creaky, old, useless vehicles into generous charity donations by fixing, repairing, extracting parts, or scrapping the car and ultimately making a world of difference to our needy dogs. Cars 4 Cures offers: Fast, free pick up Quick disposal Maximum Value Tax receipt guaranteed at time of booking Receipt issued by Speaking of Dogs Rescue All donated funds stay in Canada A feel-good deed while disposing of your junk vehicle Please visit to find out more or call them toll free at WAGS AND WIGGLES FOR PARTY 4 PAWS! Thank you to everyone who made Party 4 Paws such a grand success! Organizers Denice and Chris did another superb job, making sure the evening was entertaining and fun filled. Chef Carolina made a delicious dinner, and we d like to extend special thanks and wags to Michael of D&D Precision Inc. for donating the food for the event! Big barks and howls of thanks also go out to Roger Ashby and Chris Saunders, for being the hosts with the most! Great music by the Swamp Kings made the night a toe-tapping, sing-along, dancing good time! So many incredible volunteers helped with so many tasks, and together they really pulled this fundraiser together and made it a best-in-show event! Preliminary numbers are in, and it looks like the event raised $15K for our dogs. We are ever grateful for the tireless efforts of everyone involved in Party 4 Paws! Many dogs will be benefitting for months to come! Photo gallery on page 9. THIS MONTH S RECALLS: Click on a recall to be directed to further information online. Blue Buffalo Blue Divine Delights and Blue Wilderness Trail Trays Blue Buffalo Blue Wilderness Rocky Mountain Recipe Wellness 95% Beef Barnsdale Farms, HoundsTooth and Mac s Choice pig ears Speaking of Dogs Newsletter April

9 Speaking of Dogs Newsletter April

10 In Memoriam Quincy LOVED BY MIKE AND DOREEN NEILSON, AND STAFF AT CEDARBRAE FOREVER IN FOSTER MAY 2014 PASSED MARCH 2017 Misty LOVED BY MIKE AND DOREEN NEILSON, QUINCY AND STAFF AT CEDARBRAE FOREVER IN FOSTER JULY 2016 PASSED MARCH 2017 Melody LOVED BY ANN B., FAMILY AND FRIENDS ADOPTED MAY 26, 2013 PASSED MARCH 13, 2017 Lucyfer LOVED BY NICO ADOPTED OCTOBER 2012 PASSED MARCH 2017 Speaking of Dogs Newsletter April